For a dream comes with much business and painful effort, and a fool’s voice with many words. – Ecclesiastes 5:3 Amplified Bible (AMP)

Many have argued that American swimmer Michael Phelps is the greatest Olympian of all time. His 22 career medals – 18 of which are gold – go a long way towards supporting that claim. As one Website reports, he has won 71 medals (57 gold/ 11 silver/ 3 bronze) from all of his career competitions (both Olympic and non-Olympic), and he has been honored with several awards, including FINA Swimmer of the Year Award in 2012, Sportsman of the Year award by Sports Illustrated, and USOC SportsMan of the Year Award.

How has Phelps accomplished such mastery of his sport? By maintaining an intense workout and diet regimen. The details of his training and eating habits are too numerous to recount here, but the gist is this: he works out six hours per day, six days per week. As a result of his diligent, and no doubt painful, training efforts, Phelps has achieved his dream of being the best swimmer in the world.

Many people talk of their dreams, but few engage in the diligent business and painful effort that making dreams a reality requires. Unwilling to dedicate the years of focused, determined effort necessary to sculpt a dream out of nothing, most people give up trying after realizing that dream-building is a lot harder than they imagined.

Of course, hard work alone cannot guarantee success. God must bless the work. If our hard work has been fruitless, it’s probably because we haven’t been doing the work God intended us to do. But if you are doing the work to which you were called – and if you are doing it with all of your might – then you can rest assured that sooner or later, you’ll be able to touch the dream that God gave you long ago.